


The Charles They Left Behind

by shydlight



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Charles and his messed up mind, Charles is a fucked up baby boy, Charles needs a hug, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, F/M, Hank tries, He kills bad people, Implied rapists, M/M, Multi, Self-Hatred, Sorta porn but not really, Suicide Attempt, he needs hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 23:15:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7483818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shydlight/pseuds/shydlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven kept him alive.<br/>Moira gave him something to live for.<br/>And Erik, bless Erik, finally made him feel like he was living.</p><p>Or</p><p>Charles hates life and loses those few things that make it worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Charles They Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 3 in the morning while hating myself. It's shitty and short and I'm not gonna fix any mistakes. (: enjoy

The first time it happened, Charles swears it was an accident. The second time he was over emotional and a wreck, only to hear the screams as he blinked out of the fury. The following times had similar, though different reasons. But it wasn't until he lost everyone who kept him grounded, kept him human, that he enjoyed it. 

He'd been only eight the first time it had happened. He hadn't meant it honestly. He didn't know what was happening. No one could blame him for the maid's death, right? He'd only been a child, afraid and trembling with tears. He'd done what every child would when hysteric, find and cling to the person he trusted most. 

The maid, his nanny, has hugged him close and ran her slender fingers through his hair to calm his hurricane of emotion. His head hurt. He could hear screaming. He could feel things that weren't his own. He was utterly terrified. 

So when she suddenly stilled and a raging shock of pain shot through Charles temple, he didn't know what was happening at first. Then he willed himself to look up at her. Her eyes were wide with horror, mouth open in a silent scream as her hands fell limp and she crumpled to the ground in front of her. It took four hours of silent bliss before it all came rushing back and he realized what he'd done. 

The second time it happened, he hadn't even known he'd done it till he heard the screams. 

His mother had just shoved him into his room with no more than a weak attempt at goodbye. She'd been yelling on the phone every second since she'd gotten home from a long trip and Charles had barely gotten a word in.

When his mother finally spoke to him after a day of asking her to pay an ounce of attention to him, it was to tell him she was heading out again. His new nanny would take care of him. 

He was hurt. He was angry. He was full of puberty induced hormones. So when he started trashing his room, nails bloody as he ripped fabrics and pillows and scratched the walls, he wasn't thinking. 

Nor was he thinking about all the fury and anger and reckless hatred projecting out of him in waves. The pain of a child who never felt truly loved. The anger of a kid ignored and pushed aside. The pounding of a quickened pulse of a teen who was fed up with laying down for a mother and father who never even made him a cup of cocoa when he had nightmares. 

He slumped to his knees when his arms were exhausted and his nails were in broken bits, dripping onto the floor in small angry red dots to stain his carpet. He hung his head and let the wet hot tears spill down his cheeks and let his breath hitch in an ugly sob.

That was until he heard the screams of his mother coming across two dead housemaids just down the hall from his room. He quickly tugged on a jacket to keep his hands hidden, wiped his eyes against the sleeves, and rushed to meet the scene. 

They'd walked right into all that pain and angst. They'd died yanking at their hair to try and stop the insensible and horrendous pain shattering their skulls. They'd been silent too as they collapsed and convulsed. One had even been alive enough for blood to pool at her lips and spill down her chin.  
His mother had canceled her trip. 

He didn't speak for two weeks. 

Raven came and that changed quite a lot for him. He was more careful with his power. He even learned to convince his mother to take in the poor orphan she wouldn't have looked twice at had he not intervened. 

Raven had been a godsend. He wasn't alone after all. He wasn't that much of a freak as he feared. He had someone to show his powers rather than bottle them up. 

But, unfortunately, peace didn't last long. He'd been stupid. He'd been irreversibly idiotic. His father was due to visit, to spend a few nights at the mansion with Charles and his mother. His mother had not told his father about Raven. Shed had no mental incentive for Charles to bring up the bubbly girl whose appearance changed day to day. Pretty baby blue eyes one day and gentle pudding brown the next. 

He'd just gone out to pick a few flowers. That was all. Raven hadn't felt up to going out that day, having had a bad day keeping her mutation in swing. So he'd planned to pick the prettiest blue flowers to make her feel better. 

What he hadn't intended was to not hear the expensive cars pull up. He hadn't heard the front door or seen his father enter the house. If anything he'd been peacefully oblivious as he hummed a tune to himself. 

It was Ravens shrill scream that sent him bolting through the wide halls and his shoes screech loud against the wood flooring when he came upon a scene that sent him into a panic.

His father the mean and cruel man stood above a shaking and very much blue Raven laying on the ground. She was clutching her head and crying out for Charles both mentally and verbally. His father hadn't looked to him, only intent on laying another crushing blow to Charles only friend. 

He'd panicked. He hadn't thought it through. But in a second he was cupping his temples and screaming for his father to stop. To just go away. To die. He was only 13, he didn't know. He swore he didn't know. But when he looked back up his father was staring at him with pained horror and disgust and was clutching at his chest.

Charles didn't know what to do so he simply rushed to Raven and helped her to her feet. Her mutation spasmed along her skin and next and everywhere. It rippled in pained bursts as he helped her and rushed them to the forgotten shack in the back meadow. 

His father, the unhealthy and fat man that he was, was declared dead by heart attack. His mother had mourned by locking herself away in the rum room. 

Raven had held him as he cried, holding all his power back to prevent her any harm. She hushed his cries and gasped claims of being a monster. She'd kissed away his tears and when he finally looked up into her eyes, they both found themselves kissing, curled up in old blankets and tears still wet on their cheeks. 

For years to come, when either one of them was broken and needed support, they found themselves sharing gentle kisses and touches in the usual dark of night. 

As they grew Raven pretended she wasn't beautifully blue and Charles pretended to have a grip on his emotions. Eventually they both pretended that they never shared those midnight whispers and forbidden shows of affection. 

They grew up. Charles graduated schools and got degrees. He swore he had a better grip on his powers. Raven followed him everywhere. 

Charles partied. Charles got drunk and high and experimented. Raven was there to pick him up and drag him back to their apartment at 1 in the morning. Raven was the one to pick a very loopy Charles up from strange women, and men's, homes. She kept him alive as he 'lived’. She kept him breathing and kept his hair from his eyes when he was vomiting on her new shoes. 

She was there when he tried to take his life. 

She was there every time he tried to take his life. 

Finally when he was getting a better grip on himself, or at least, bottled up that absolute craving to drown out people's voices with booze and drugs and meaningless, sloppy sex to a small part deep in his gut. He met Moira. 

She'd shown him the first positive contact he'd gotten for being a mutant that didn't come from Raven. She'd been excited and astonished by what they could do and his research. She'd shown him a brighter path. Shed shown Raven and him a glimpse, a simple possibility of a future where they wouldn't have to hide. 

And then he'd felt the burning and fire hat passion that was Erik. He'd felt the rightness and anger and fury and he didn't know when his cock got hard between the initial shock and the cool splash of him diving into the water. 

And then he was connecting mentally with that beautiful and suffering mind and he felt spasms of pleasure rocking him in a way he'd never felt before. It was disgusting and filthy but as he dragged the shocked man away from death's door and was gasping for air, he was grateful for the water hiding the spilled seed in his boxers. 

As they gathered more mutants it had only been a matter of time before Erik had him pressed to a shitty motel wall and was kissing the breath out of his weak lungs. Every night of that trip he'd tapped into that gorgeous and intoxicating mind, fill to the brim with anger and passion. He thrived off it. He lived off it. 

Every night he took Erik into him one way or another. Whether that was dropping to his knees in a broken glass riddled alley or spreading his legs for the one man who made him whole and calmed that throbbing emptiness inside of his soul. 

Raven had been there first. Shed kept him from giving in to the pain. 

Moira had shown him a brighter goal and been a close friend. 

Erik had given him a new energy. Erik had helped him learn to love.

Raven made sure he was alive. Moira gave him something to live for. And Erik, bless Erik, gave him the feeling of actually living. 

And then the beach happened. Then he'd lost so much more than he could cope with. He lost his Raven. He pushed Moira away. He lost his legs. And Erik abandoned him. 

It was three days after he got home when he swallowed half a bottle of pills with a full bottle of scotch. Hank had found him naked in the shower with the water boiling hot and scalding his skin, unconsciousness and drooling all over himself. 

Hank had moved himself in the next day.

Charles was a shattered and broken mess like never before. 

Hank usually found him lying on the ground a few feet from his wheelchair, dressed in weeks old clothes. Sometimes he come to see the floor littered with beer bottles and drugs. Sometimes he'd find razors. 

He'd eventually start picking Charles up. He helped him change clothes. He helped him bathe. He cleaned the floors. And he wrapped Charles wounds with the utmost care. 

Eventually Charles stopped fighting his helpful attempts. Eventually he just stopped moving or caring all together. 

The first time he killed someone and didn't test think to care was when he saw a man on tv. 

He was wanted by the police for raping some women, the newscaster had said. They showed a picture and his information. The telepath knew Hank probably wouldn't have rolled him down to the newly made Cerebro if he'd known what Charles was doing. 

It took two minutes to find the man. It took thirty seconds to turn his mind to goo in his skull. 

All he had to do was channel all the emotions boiling under the dead like surface and project it to the man. It was an excruciating way to die and for a few brief minutes Charles was in bliss.

Easy. Until they came back.

They always came back. 

Afterwards Charles told himself he was a criminal. The man deserved to die. 

The next few times, he struggled for reasons. 

A father who killed his family. A woman who killed her baby. Three more accused rapists. A man who got out of a guilty charge. 

After about three weeks he stopped looking for a reason.

Hank eventually found out. Of course Hank found out. And hed given Charles this odd mix of disgust and anger. Charles had just taken off the helmet and ran his fingers through his shaggy and disgustingly oily hair as he was shouted at. 

Hank tried to convince him to stop. He got angry. He treated Charles with suffocating pity. He tried to make Charles a better man. 

The Charles Hank knew was dead. He was just a shell now. Just a shadow of a man who'd been hurt to much and craved that few minutes of mind numbing peace that came with taking a person's life. 

\-------

“Charles,” at the first mental reach for him, he'd bent over the side of his bed and vomited. 

The second time he was wracked with tremors and gags. 

The third time he replied. 

“Hello, old friend.”


End file.
